What the Living Do: Poems [Paperback]

Marie Howe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1999

"What the Living Do . . . is a deeply beautiful book, with the fierce galloping pace of a great novel."— Boston Globe

Informed by the death of a beloved brother, here are the stories of childhood, its thicket of sex and sorrow and joy, boys and girls growing into men and women, stories of a brother who in his dying could teach how to be most alive. What the Living Do reflects "a new form of confessional poetry, one shared to some degree by other women poets such as Sharon Olds and Jane Kenyon. Unlike the earlier confessional poetry of Plath, Lowell, Sexton et al., Howe's writing is not so much a moan or a shriek as a song. It is a genuinely feminine form . . . a poetry of intimacy, witness, honesty, and relation" (Boston Globe).

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This compassionate memorial to illness and the loss of Howe's brother, John, and other friends ably depicts the growth and development of personal bonds against which "post-modern brokenness" is measured. (Howe has also coedited an important collection of essays about AIDS, In the Company of My Solitude, LJ 7/95). This thoughtful analysis of elements of grief ("a living remedy") will perhaps help to ease trauma of death, as does Robert Frost's "Home Burial," but full comprehension of "cherishing" and pain after "the wake and the funeral" seems impossible. The best of these empathetic poems demonstrate a longing for wholeness and appreciation of the "terrified and radiant" mysteries of silence. Sharing "a secret, unrecoverable history" of father, brothers, sisters, and friends?"what the living do"?Howe creates the first draft of a contemporary woman's spiritual biography. For larger collections.?Frank Allen, North Hampton Community Coll., Tannersville, Pa.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

Marie Howe's poetry is luminous, intense, eloquent. -- Stanley Kunitz

What the Living Do . . . is a deeply beautiful book, with the fierce galloping pace of a great novel. -- Boston Globe

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (April 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393318869
• ISBN-13: 978-0393318869
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #37,464 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #87 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > Poetry

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Howe strives for relentless clarity, tackles intimate issues, December 10, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: What the Living Do: Poems (Hardcover)

People have often told me that hearing the word "poetry" sets off high school nightmares of having to "interpret" or decode literature. Such reactions never cease to disappoint me, considering everyone first experiences language through poetry, the playfulness of words. The innate melodies and rhythms that those first tunes bring to life in our early years are revived in Marie Howe's second book of poetry "What the Living Do". Striving for relentless clarity of language and image, Howe has written a painful celebration of "what the living do" after the death of a loved one. These verses, however, are by no means juvenile, confronting head-on the life and death of her brother John as well as the death of poet Jane Kenyon. And amid the suffering Howe's poetry insists there is room for love, for making love. Whatever loss that the poet endures because of her brother's death is countered (complemented perhaps) by her ability to be intimate and inexorably human amid the living. The poems are powerfully memorable, pushing for an aesthetic that is personal yet connective, accessible yet multi-layered. Writing in a language that is uniquely hers and yet entirely ours for the taking, Marie Howe's "What the Living Do" instructs us on how she has found that both praise and misery can undoubtedly inhabit the same swirling space.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this heartbreaking and beautiful book, December 16, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (Nevada City, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What the Living Do: Poems (Hardcover)

I have been carrying around a copy of the title poem from this book ever since I saw it in the Atlantic years ago - and waiting and waiting for Howe's second book to come out. It's worth the wait - a chilling and stunning and beautiful collection of poems, written so straightforwardly, as if Howe were just talking to herself as she walked down the street, or to us over coffee. It takes very hard work to make poetry sound so open and easy, and the style is exactly right for the seriousness of her subject(s): death, child abuse, love. Marie Howe is able to hold the pain in her heart up to the light, and is generous enough to let us stand there for a while with her.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Marie knows Howe to write amazing poetry..., December 19, 2004

By 

LK (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What the Living Do: Poems (Paperback)

"Anything I've ever tried to keep by force I've lost."

Marie Howe captures the gut feelings of living in her striking book of poetry. The pain of losing her brother to AIDs resonates through the later poems, while the earlier focus on the manic emotions of childhood. Even people uncomfortable with poetry will enjoy reading the universal memories she's translated so touchingly into the written word. This is not esoteric verse: it is clean, familiar, moving moments of time frozen under the glass of a copyright. Howe expresses just what the living do as a melody that swoops and soars. She also underscores her poetry with a deep harmony indicative of the void in life, a hole in one's heart that was once devoted to a loved one.

"But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass, say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless: I am living, I remember you."